Evolve Goes Free-To-Play On PC

Evolve, the 4v1 multiplayer game that launched last year to tepid responses, is now free-to-play on PC. It's also getting some major gameplay changes and an entirely new progression system.
The developers at Turtle Rock announced the news in a heartfelt letter posted on the forums yesterday. Turtle Rock co-founders Chris Ashton and Phil Robb opened up about some of the mistakes they made — like the "DLC shitstorm" that turned off a lot of potential players — and talked about some of the changes they have been making to the game over the past year:

When people first started playing Evolve at those and other conferences, it was magical. Sure, there was the AAA video game hype surrounding our title. Yeah, we also had the flashy displays, the giant Goliath statue, and all the other things AAA games do to get people excited. And that stuff was cool. Really cool. But, what we lived for — what was cooler by far — was just seeing people play Evolve for the first time. We worked on it for years and then, suddenly, people got to experience our game, controller in-hand. There was genuine excitement — real joy — when people played. It was like nothing they'd ever played before and watching it happen was like no high we ever felt.

Then, when Evolve launched, the reception wasn't what we expected. Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment — for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people's enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience.

We want that magic back and we aim to make it happen. We've made a lot of changes, improvements and additions to Evolve over the past year and we've got a lot more coming. In short, we're giving this game a vigorous overhaul!

People who bought Evolve on PC before today will be given "Founder" status, the devs said. The console versions will still cost money.

Comments

I know they are never going to be able to make everyone happy all of the time but I'm pretty sure this is the nail in the coffin for my hopes of them bringing in LAN mode. When they close the servers down on this one, it'll be gone forever. >_>

Story time! I went to an all-girls’ school. My friends and I had that special bond of closeness that apparently comes with synced-up periods and measuring the length of each other’s winter leg hair.
This, obviously, led to a brief era of trying to catch one of the others unawares with the most impressive, most unexpected spank possible. We’re talking sneaking up behind each other in the hallway and laying one down that made the earth shake. If I couldn’t read your palm from the imprint, you weren’t doing a good enough job.